When Marnies Attack....

the first signs are a strange glazed stare, followed by a horrible but oddly unscary sliming....












When she's not oozily threatening the world, Marnie's smiling a lot more now, like she's getting to know what it means. She's standing (with balance support) as well, getting quite upset in the morning when she's not upright on her own legs.

She's recovering from her first bad cold - snuffling through feeds and sleeping. Not very pleasant, but it has its bonuses - she's discovered she can move her nose even when her head's held to administer the saline drops. Chasing a nose around a face is a new experience for me.
More's the pity for Christine, Marnie's got wickedly pointed fingernails she'll want to keep in later life, but she doesn't have control of them yet. Luckily she is recovering nicely from her schlager scar.

Christine's doing much better - the antibiotics seem to have sorted most of the pain in her abdomen so she can move a lot more easily now. Back driving again, she says she never realised how house bound she could become without being able to drive.

Mum and Dad were still visiting until Tuesday, doing sterling work. The garden got its first mowing and looks the better for it. Pimms on the lawn, we think?

The garage (yes, we finally have an operational garage again! Yay!) is pretty organised and full of boxes, and loads of little jobs were knocked off as well as the day to day cooking, washing, etc. Of course, those all went by the wayside whenever M wanted to play or to be taken for a walk. Who says family don't make good visitors?

We did allow the workers a few days off. We visited the Museum of Welsh Life, where they've just re-erected St Telio's Church (pictured) after moving it from Glamorgan.

We spent another pleasant day in the Independent Kingdom of Hay-on-Wye (most famous export, second hand books). Not the most organised bookshops, but if you've time to browse (and, to be honest, you don't go to Hay in anything like a hurry), you'll find all sorts of odd books. Except magic books. I believe there's a conspiracy to keep the secret from the public. Even in a shop with hundreds of thousands of books, only two on magic?

On the work front, I've submitted the final report for my industry engagement project in the School of Engineering, and that project is now successfully closed. We managed to interest 40 odd companies to look at collaborating with the School, and I'll be interested to see what comes of those contacts over the next year.

I start a new contract at the School on Monday, this time with the Knowledge Engineering Systems. I'll be a research assistant with them part-time for 12 months, looking at artificial intelligence and eLearning as well as engaging with industry for that group. I'll also have a a couple of days a week to pursue work through our own company, or more likely, look after Marnie!

And just in case you were wondering, Glaikit has found a very naice new home right outside our door on top of the cupboard - just at head height...quite disconcerting at 3 am.

(I can haz hom, perhaps? - OK, I've been looking at the wrong websites, Zan, or maybe it's the right ones...)